Random Thoughts
Wednesday, February 27, 2008,4:43 PM
The O.R. & The Internal Medicine
Today i had two totally different situations

The First

Is that for the first time I attended my General Internal Medicine round, and it was Shocking, the patient was a woman of something like 22-24 years, a simple peasant who her bad luck and lack of money for paid medical care drove her into our glorious hospital. And the Clinical Round started, we were about 12 students, a professor and a small doctor.

The Professor started to explain to us some facts on the patient and how are mean examiners are going to ask us, how we are supposed to dodge their question and how is the best way to answer them.
Then he asked us to start our examination.

One of us stepped forward to start the examination, and the Professor asked us all to approach in order to see the case and our friend's examination, our friends started the examination and the professor asked another to examine the pulse in the other hand of the patient, another to examine her left foot and another to examine her right foot. so by total there were about at least FOUR hands on the Female patient, all applying pressure, feeling and examining.

This was not the end, he asked her to revel her abdomen to start the abdominal examination, and the show continued, She was trying to cover herself every while as a weak sign of protest, but we kept reveling her, she was hopeless and powerless.

I Imagined myself in the patient shoes and asked my self, how would I feel? Humiliated? or Degraded? or would I consider my self as a human being at all? When they were teaching us, they told us that we are going to be doctors. Doctors who will know secrets of the houses, who will see things that no others will see, and that we shall up to this hard task and keep the patients secrets. They taught us that we will deal with humans in their weakest states the state of sickness, a state which turn the most might into a weak, defeated person, and that we have to respect that, we have to keep in mind that we are treating humans, we have lives in our hands, and that God trusted us on the lives of his creatures and and and to the end of all that long speech.
How come when we see them working, they don't care about all that and they as us to care!!??
How come we shall respect their teachings when they themselves are the first ones to break it!!??
How Am I supposed to learn while I feel i am degrading another human being?

At the end I thanked God that i have the power to stand on my legs, and not be in her shoes, and i asked him to preserve anyone I know from the same fate.




The Second

Is that for the First time in my life I also enter an Operating Room, i was passing by a friend of mine by chance, and there was a case scheduled for an operation and he invited me to scrub in to watch and observe, and I did.

The Feeling was intoxicating, I - the one watching - felt a huge surge of power, so i can't imagine the power he was feeling behind the blade, as he opens retract the muscle and flesh, control the small bleeders, and finishes the operation.

I Could only say WOW, and for the coincidence there was also a senior doctor supervising on the operation, also he is a surgeon who is supposed to be cold blooded, stone hearted and impatient, he was very caring, very careful on the patient, very friendly with the stuff in he OR also me who he didn't know even my name. He kept asking my friend to take care, he kept asking him why we do this, and why we do that. he kept explaining every thing to him before he actually do anything although my friend has performed this operation before but he was reminding him, ensuring him and making sure he is doing his best, and how after my friend finished the operation he checked and made the post operative care himself.

I am not saying that both are standards, they are both just examples, but to my luck i meet both in the same day, and saw both situations in the same day, when i started this article i was planing to write about the feelings I had in the OR and how I thought that I need to this again, but i found myself writing what you read. I don't know why but it just happened.

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posted by Someone Different
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